We have recently added facebook connect to our forums, bringing a whole range of features and functionality. If you don’t yet have an account on our forums, now is a great time to sign up and interact with other clients.

Facebook connect brings far too many features to list but here are some of the highlights -

• Create an account simply by logging into Facebook via the forum
• Sync avatar with Facebook profile picture
• Get notified of thread replies in Facebook
• Get notified of PMs in Facebook

If you already have an account on our forum you can also link your facebook account by clicking the ‘User CP’ link and choosing ‘Facebook Options’ near the bottom of the page.

In addition to the usual benefits, we will also be posting exclusive Facebook offers to users that integrate with Facebook.  Keep an eye on the ‘Notifications’ corner of Facebook.

If you’re not already a forum member, click the ‘Facebook Connect’ button to get started today!

The Gumblar virus has caused a huge amount of damage to websites around the world. The virus steals passwords from FTP software such as Dreamweaver and Filezilla to upload a modified version of a webpage which would be used to infect other visitors PCs.

Regular virus scanners such as ClamAV would not pick up the threat as the virus isn’t actually uploaded to our servers. Therefore we’ve had to come up with another way to protect our clients.

With the new protection in place any files that are uploaded via FTP are scanned instantly for various keywords or phrases. If a threat is found a number of things will happen to secure your account -

• The file is moved to a quarantine for an administrator to review
• The IP address of the uploader is blocked at our firewall
• The password on the account is changed
• The FTP connection is killed
• Our administrators are notified so we can perform other security checks on your account.

If we do get notified of a client account being used in this way we will contact you and ask you to scan your PC with an updated virus scanner immediately.

If you have any questions, feel free to let us know.

As some of you may know, we run a fairly strict firewall which will automatically block your IP address for too many failed login attempts. This is to stop brute-force attempts against your cPanel, email and other areas of your account.

If your IP address is blocked this will result in the server blocking all requests from your address and making it appear as if the server is down. To rectify this we would normally require you to submit a support ticket, however we now have the facility to do this automatically.

If you find your IP is blocked, you can now remove your IP from the ‘My Products and Services’ section of the client area. If you are on a static IP you can also request that we whitelist your address to prevent further blocks.

We will also be creating a WHMCS module for resellers so their clients are also able to request removal and permanent whitelisting.

We have recently added the ability to receive SMS messages on certain actions. We currently have this enabled to send you a free SMS message if your client area password is changed, however we will soon be expanding this to overdue invoice notifications, cpanel password changes and much more.

To enable the notifications, add your mobile telephone number, in international format, to the ‘My Details’ page of your client area.

We’ve just added ‘Old Script Finder’ to all cPanel servers.

Old Script finder scans your hosting account in search of out of date scripts and alerts you of newer versions.

Out of date scripts can leave your account open to attack and running the latest software is always recommended. Old Script finder makes it easier for you to view the latest version of any scripts running under your account.

Let us know what you think.

We are pleased to announce the launch of our US web hosting service after popular demand.

Both Shared and Reseller packages are available on our powerful US servers based in the Softlayer datacenter in Dallas.

The minimum server specs are as follows -

Dual ‘Nehalem’ Quad Core Xeon 5520 (8 x 2.26GHz + hyper-threading CPU)
12GB RAM
2 x 250GB SATAII HDD in RAID
1 GigE (1000Mbit) port

More information can be found on our Shared and Reseller hosting pages.